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REVIEW Eagles & Butterflies ‘Last Dance’ [Art Imitating Life]

‘The Last Dance’ in its name alone carries weight – a last dance, danced by every music-loving party-goer on the planet, rises to the surface of our memory. That sweet moment, the apex of your night that also brings the bitter taste of finality with it, a feeling that’s encapsulated in the track’s pleasingly perfect cadences and its melancholic key. That’s what Eagles & Butterflies latest release, ‘The Last Dance’, delivers. Out on his label, Art Imitating Life, the track couldn’t be more relevant.

‘The Last Dance’ took the underground music community by storm. Tucked away in sets by heavyweights Âme, Dixon and John Digweed, it is the ballad of its time. A perfect finale track with a fitting title, it included certain characteristics that made it so: long and heartfelt breakdowns, ear-pleasing perfect cadences and enough uplifting percussion to please dance floors. In the flurry of excitement preluding the tracks release, days before its release the world was treated to another rendition, deemed the ‘Sunrise Mix’.

The track begins with a swaying rhythm underneath short-lived synthesizer chords. This lasts long enough for it to become familiar to us, for us to follow the up-and-down motion with our finger, or in our mind’s eye if visual representation is our thing. A level of intensity is added with the tick-tocking 16th notes, as well as increased drums in what sounds like an improvised manner. It is here that our hearts stand still – we shut our eyes, reminiscing upon the night’s glory. The highlights of such memories become sharper as the grand synth chords soar. We sway because the beat is familiar to us, we hum because the melody is beautiful and we dance because it is our last one.

Eagles & Butterflies ‘Art Imitating Life Vol. 3’ including tracks ‘The Last Dance (Original Mix) and (Sunrise Mix) was released on January 19th, 2018 on Art Imitating Life. (Tess)